The right tools are an integral part of getting any job done. In the world of digital content tools are plentiful, so finding the right one for you can be tricky. That's why we ask the experts what tools they use to get their jobs done. In this month's installment, we talk to Ashley Taylor Anderson, Director of Content, Ceros.

Thomson Reuters: A Case of Streamlining Data

The Solution

Thomson Reuters looked at numerous competing technologies but ended up choosing Connotate because, according to Saraiva, "it was one of the key technologies available that allowed and enabled non-technical users to achieve great results."

This solution would turn the RSA program into a low-hassle plan that met short-term needs as well as paved the way for an innovative future. After purchasing a license for Connotate's on-premise solution, Saraiva and his team worked with them in order to adapt the technology to his expectations.

According to Jacobson, Thomson Reuters has a multiserver environment, because the software is truly mission-critical to them. Connotate provided an initial round of training with the software in order to achieve what Jacobson calls a "train the trainer approach."

"We train their team leads, and then they went off and trained their staff using those people," says Jacobson. "It's proven to be very effective. They built some really good expertise within their leadership team and they are very self-sufficient."

Extensions were built specifically for the RSA program, but beyond that, Saraiva found that the software more or less worked straight out of the box. "It's not complicated to deploy, not complicated to look after and it's very well integrated," he says.

Another important feature of Connotate's software, according to Jacobson, is that it is language-agnostic, making it optimal for global companies such as Thomason Reuters. "They're using our software to cover something like 50 different countries and 2 dozen different languages," says Jacobson. "That really is a valuable feature for them."

Connotate's simple point-and-click interface that allows custom personalization presented an answer to Saraiva's question as to whether or not he could empower and engage analysts to use an automation technology.

The Outcome

Deploying Connotate's solution has allowed Thomson Reuters to simplify and improve the way that it collects and monitors data. Not only has the completeness of the data improved, but the timeliness has improved as well. There are, however, some instances where the software needed some tweaking in order to achieve specific results for Saraiva and his team.

"We found that in about 80% of cases we were successful, so we were able to build agents straightforwardly. In about 20% of cases there were issues," says Saraiva. "Those issues were to do with the less accessible nature of certain websites, so some of them for instance rely a lot on flash, which made it really unsuitable for Connotate to collect content from."

Based on the initial results that Saraiva found from using the Connotate software, he provided a great deal of feedback in order to work toward a solution that worked 100%. Despite the fact that there were some initial flaws in the plan, the Connotate software has not only changed the way that the RSA program works, but the way that Saraiva envisions the future of the program as well.

According to Saraiva, the idea of expanding the range of content that his team monitors would have been rejected had it been approached years ago, for time and cost reasons.

"Now with Connotate things have changed, so we feel very confident that we have the experience to-if we want to start looking at additional content, add some additional markets, perhaps some different languages," says Saraiva. "It's largely going to be viable, it's probably going to be cost-effective, and it's something that certainly is doable. So it has enabled us to look beyond what we weren't previously able to do."

After implementing the Connotate solution, Thomson Reuters found that in 1 month, 3.35 million webpages and documents were checked by RSA Connotate Agents and 115,000 content notifications were produced. And when the need for a new agent arises, it will only take team members 30 minutes to deploy it."We gave Thomson Reuters an enterprise solution that they had been searching for," says Jacobson. "Instead of having 20 different approaches spread across dozens of different organizations about how to get data from the web, we really gave them an enterprise quality and enterprise scale level solution," says Jacobson.

Moving forward, Saraiva plans to continually upgrade to new versions of Connotate's solutions when they become available throughout the year. With the help of extensive feedback, he says that the changes Connotate has made in its programs are relevant to optimizing the way in which the RSA program uses the technology.

"I am very impressed with the Connotate technology, I love it. It doesn't mean that it is perfect, but fundamentally it is a very impressive technology," says Saraiva. "It works, it's well-integrated, and it makes my job a lot easier."